FAITH THAT SURVIVES THE STORMS OF LIFE

What do we think of when we hear the words, “Knowing God’s heart”? In fact, what is God’s heart if God is only spirit (John 4:24)?

Our understanding of what it means to know God’s heart is critical not only to comprehending the core of the Christian faith, but also to holding a solid, intimate relationship with the Lord. For the Christian, digging deep into what we believe, and why, is crucial to developing a strong foundational faith capable of surviving the storms of life; the adversities, the suffering, and the difficult but legitimate questions we must inevitably confront along the way.

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN RELIGIOSITY AND THE NARROW GATE

This article is dedicated to the purpose of helping each of us understand the importance of knowing God’s heart intimately, and what it means to apply this understanding of God’s heart to our faith on a daily basis.

This is the difference between knowing (conscious knowledge), and living out what we know (faith in action). For many of us, this is the difference between religiosity, and recognizing the true narrow gate Jesus taught about is not the one we thought we were on. Please read carefully.

OUR GOD IS ABLE

There are many people today who still have not read the Bible. One may wonder:

Are they unable to know God’s heart without reading it? Don’t we have to read the Bible to know God’s heart?

I don’t necessarily believe that to be the case, but I’ll explain what I mean. I believe God—because He is a spiritual Being—reveals Himself to people in different ways; sometimes in dreams or visions, sometimes in unexplainable circumstances, and other times as whispers to our very soul. The main point is that, while it’s imperative that we do read the Bible if we have access to one, it doesn’t mean God’s heart is unable to reach people in ways we can’t understand. Our God is able (Ephesians 3:20)!

HE KNOWS WHOSE HEARTS ARE READY FOR HIM TO ENTER

When God calls to us, it is a pure, unadulterated invitation to know His unconditional love, personally. God’s grace, straight out of His heart, is what enables us to learn to trust His will over our own. God’s truth is the soul of the Bible, reaching from millenniums past to today because His truth transcends space and time. His heart is capable of bypassing all that our sin tries to shun us from discovering when we love Him with all our heart, mind, soul and strength (Matthew 22:37).

God reveals His truth to whom He chooses, when we chooses, and lastly—He reveals Himself to specific people at specific times because He knows their heart, and He knows when and if they’re ready for Him to enter.

WHAT IT MEANS TO KNOW THE LORD

His heart is written into 66 books which collaboratively sync together the entirety of how humankind came to be, and how God’s love for us is unstoppable, inalterable, and omnipotent. Nothing compares to the love God has for those who love Him (Romans 8:38-39)!

To know God’s heart is to want to know Him. To know God’s heart is to desire time in His presence; to know His will, His ways; what pleases Him, what angers Him, and to pursue how we can be more obedient and less rebellious.

Knowing the Lord looks like recognizing the eternal blessings of placing His will and desires ahead of our own as a result of seeing the importance of the manifestation of the Kingdom of God coming to earth through our faithful obedience.

PRIORITIZING GOD BECAUSE WE LOVE HIM

When we want a person we love to know they’re special to us, we prioritize ways to help them to feel the love we have for them. We place those priorities ahead of other, less important ones, and we show that person through different love languages just how special they are to us.

Likewise, with God, we prioritize Him by putting into action the practice of understanding His essence; learning His written Word, connecting to His Holy Spirit, and honoring His desire to be known by us even in our very temporary, limited fleshly life. We love our neighbor as ourselves, and live a life of revering God in all we do, say, and think—all while repenting of our evil ways on a daily basis and returning to Christ in humility when we fall short.

KNOWN FOR HIS HEART

The same way we as humans desire to be known for our heart and character and not our status or labels, God wants to be known for His heart, and not for His power. His heart is what promised salvation for those who place their faith in Jesus as Lord; His power is what made salvation possible through faith. His heart is what chose to make a way to bring the Israelites out of Egypt; His power is what made it possible to escape the rebellion of Pharaoh and his army.

COSMICALLY IMPECCABLE, SENTIENT BEING

When we deny the Bible its authority over our lives, we misunderstand God’s purposeful use of power (His use of power is a reflection of the involvement of His heart), His truth for us (objective truth and objective morality), and the most colorful illustration of the most cosmically impeccable, sentient Being willing to stop at nothing to reclaim humanity back to Himself in Christ.

These details all reveal beautiful, real aspects of God’s heart; namely that His very nature is love, and that His character knows nothing but righteousness and perfect harmony.

REJECTING THE SOURCE OF LIFE

Let’s briefly take a closer look at the previous point about rejection. When we reject the Bible, we’re not merely arguing its historical reliability or questioning its veracity as eye-witness testimony, we’re also spitting on the promises of God for our redemption through faith in Jesus—and we’re ignoring the foreshadowed warnings God set before us in advance about the end of the world.

Rejecting all of this about God is to reject His heart, and even His very presence. We must understand the massive implications behind this particular rejection. God is eternal. To reject God is to reject eternal life, because God is the very Source of life.

WORLDLY ARGUMENTS DON’T ERASE GOD

Without God, there is nothing. To reject God because of any argument based on the consequences of mankind’s sin in a finite world, we’re presupposing our argument justifiably and completely counters God’s lack in whatever it is we have a problem with in regard to creation (a creation that includes ourselves).

This rejection leads to eternal separation from God because an argument doesn’t erase Him, and it doesn’t change the consequences of our choices manifesting as the sinful heart posture to be selfish, egocentric and rebellious towards a morally perfect, holy and eternal God.

A MORALLY TRANSCENDANT APTITUDE

Choosing ourselves as our own gods due to misunderstanding God’s heart doesn’t change God’s incorrigible, unconditionally loving nature as both an objective moral standard Giver and justice Implementor. We may not comprehend God’s ways since our own ways lack His morally transcendent aptitude, but that doesn’t render our choice to deny His Lordship over our lives to be any less consequential of eternal damnation.

GOD’S WILL VS. OUR WILL

Let’s make no mistake here. God’s will is that we would know Him personally and intimately; that we would love Him above all else. Everything He’s done for us—most prominently His choice to send Jesus when He did—was to redirect our futures back to His divine presence for all eternity. That was God’s will. Our will, when it’s apart from God’s grace, is to choose ourselves; to deny His Lordship, His atonement for our sins, and choose rebellion which leads to a second spiritual and physical death in the lake of fire.

That isn’t God’s will.

GOD’S GIFT OF MERCY

Without God’s mercy (or the action of not giving us the punishment we deserve), our ultimate eternal destination would be absolute separation from His presence, His love, His blessings, and everything that we can fathom as categorically “good.”

But in God’s mercy, He sent Jesus as our substitute so we wouldn’t have to pay for our sins. When we reject Jesus, we reject God’s heart because His mercy is an action based on the depth of His love for humanity; that He sent His only Son to die for a species still in the middle of its sin (Romans 5:8).

God didn’t want us to be without Him, and He didn’t want to be without us even though He’s never needed us, nor would He ever need us—His desire for us nevertheless led to His mercy in the choice to send Jesus instead of punishing us, which would still have been righteous!

Are we starting to see God’s heart yet? 

A LOVE THAT RIVALS HUMAN LOVE

There are people who ask for miracles, others who demand evidence, and some just want to feel God’s presence in their very bones. Oftentimes, we get caught up in thinking of Christianity as a religion instead realizing its authentic substance is actually derived of a deeper love that far rivals that of human love.

Christianity isn’t about Sunday morning service, or fasting, or any smaller component of Christianity that adds up to its bigger whole; rather, it’s all about relationship to our Father God in Heaven who created us to be close to Him; to live for Him, and to have Him live through us, that we would be and have all the best that God created us to experience because that is what God wanted for us all along. This is what God’s heart looks like.

A GOD OF LOVE… AND OBJECTIVE TRUTH

Lots of people are familiar with the Bible verse that says, “God is love.” This comes from 1 John 4:8. In large part, this is God’s heart. He is full of love. But just like any true love, God’s heart is also the fundamental base for how we know Truth—objective truth, that is. God isn’t love without also manifesting as Truth. When we miss this, we gravely misunderstand a critical component to what makes God’s heart of love not a heart of, “Do whatever makes YOU feel happy.” Let me explain.

DON’T MISS THIS VITAL POINT

God’s heart is for those who love Him. For those who don’t love Him, or worse, who don’t even acknowledge His existence, He doesn’t force them into a relationship. That IS how He loves nonbelievers: He allows them to be spiritually blind (and deaf) when they refuse to know or acknowledge the Truth that is equally a part of God’s heart as His love is. This is an absolutely vital point we simply cannot afford to miss!

As a result, God doesn’t look like love to those who don’t want to feel forced to live a certain way that isn’t morally corrupt according to God’s standard; a standard, of course, that is reliant upon the purity and permanence of His heart.

THOSE WHO COME WITH A CONTRITE HEART

Regardless of how we view Him, God’s vow to us is that He is for us, not against us (Isaiah 41:10). He loves us and will not forsake those who come to Him in humility, with a contrite heart (Psalm 51:17), prepared to throw away cardinal desires and ask Him to give us a stronger desire for His righteousness, His Kingdom, and His Son.

For those who haven’t yet placed their trust in Christ, only God knows who will eventually choose Jesus as Lord from those on whom He rains His love despite their evil desires (Matthew 5:45).

BEAUTY FROM ASHES

To know God’s heart is to recognize God’s invitation to eternal life through Christ as a way of extending undeserved mercy for a life full of sin. Our issues with God and the existence of terrible truths like evil, while they are legitimate concerns that should be addressed appropriately, are not in any way shape or form powerful enough to undermine the case for God’s existence.

They merely point to the reality that because of God’s existence (which leads to the gift of free will we all have), we have the choice to do unspeakable evil, but we also have a God whose heart is so good and so powerful, that He creates beauty from ashes (Isaiah 61:3); He can take what the devil means for evil and turn it into something good (Genesis 50:20).

IMMINENT GREAT TRIBULATION

I think if all evil resulted in the evil it was trying to manifest, our world would be 100 times more corrupt and detestable than it is today. But because of God’s sovereignty, because of His love for those who revere and love Him, the evil in our world is actually mitigated by His protection over us; a protection that, eventually, will be lifted away during the Great Tribulation that is racing towards us as the intensity of End Times events increases.

ON DISPLAY FOR ALL TO SEE

To bring all of this together, what is God’s heart? God’s heart is the core of the Christian faith. It’s the birth place of all that is good, righteous, holy, perfect, true, and eternal. It’s the source of our salvation, it’s the reason why Jesus came to save us, and it’s the reason why there is even such a thing as mercy. His heart is the reason we should see God manifested in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection as a promise that His heart is pure, untainted, and unrivaled. He wants us to experience all that He is and to live into that experience for all eternity, beginning with the choices we make, right now.

Trust in God’s heart, because He gave everything for us (through Jesus) to be able to see not only His existence, but His love, patience, compassion, and forgiveness. He is King of long-suffering and Lord of loving us through our darkest moments.

Make no mistake: where there is anything good, there is God’s heart on display for all to see.

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